


Incubus

by stratumgermanitivum, whiskeyandspite



Category: Charlie Countryman (2013), Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Asphyxiation, Body Horror, Buried Alive, Character Death In Dream, Claustrophobia, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Defenestration, Demonic Possession, Demonic summoning, Dismemberment, Dream Demon, Drowning, Forced Orgasm, Gore, M/M, Oijia boards, Overstimulation, Rough Sex, Size Difference, Size Kink, Vore, fear kink, flaying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:10:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22258048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stratumgermanitivum/pseuds/stratumgermanitivum, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: Dreams of blood and bile and viscera every time he closed his eyes. Dreams of such deep, blatant panic that Will woke choking on his own tongue, more than once entirely soaked in sweat. Sometimes urine, which was embarrassing enough. Sometimes, Will woke hard, his thighs already slick with discharge from a previous orgasm in his sleep.Those were the worst awakenings.Will is dying, and no one knows what's killing him.
Relationships: Will Graham/Nigel (Charlie Countryman)
Comments: 54
Kudos: 145





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE READ THE TAGS** we are not joking that this is a Dead Dove fic. We mention graphic depictions of torture and violence and non-con. We wanted to explore the darker side of sex demons and their type of possession. Be safe going in!

It started as sleepiness, nothing more. Just Will feeling like his limbs were made of lead when he got out of bed every morning. Nothing to suggest anything was actually wrong, but very annoying all the same.

Will put it down to a long week of college.

But the week became three, and it got harder and harder to get out of bed.

"Mononucleosis," the campus doctor suggested with a shrug. "Not uncommon for boys your age. It's called the 'kissing disease' for a reason."

Will didn't reply to that, hoping that the blush that burned bright in his cheeks was taken as teenage embarrassment rather than what it actually was: downright panic.

"Can I take something for it?"

"Goes away on its own I'm afraid," the doctor said. "In as much as it can. You might get flare-ups once in a while, when you're stressed, mostly. On occasion this can progress to chronic fatigue syndrome. Keep up a good diet, take in fresh air, do your best."

"Right."

"Need a note for class?"

Will swallowed and nodded, and silently accepted it when it was given.

Maybe it was Mono. Will wouldn't argue that something was definitely wrong with his body. But he also knew it was more than that. More than just tiredness. More than just feeling bogged down by an invisible weight.

No matter how long Will slept, he didn't feel rested. No matter how well he ate, his eyes were drooping within an hour of being awake.

And the worst cruelty of the whole matter were the dreams. Dreams of blood and bile and viscera every time he closed his eyes. Dreams of such deep, blatant panic that Will woke choking on his own tongue, more than once entirely soaked in sweat. Sometimes urine, which was embarrassing enough. Sometimes, Will woke hard, his thighs already slick with discharge from a previous orgasm in his sleep.

Those were the worst awakenings.

They haunted him, they lingered. They came to him every night, without fail, and tore his mind to shreds.

The day he was diagnosed with Mono, Will dreamed of waking up. Paralyzed in his dorm bed, the faint chill of fear sinking over him like a heavy blanket. It was dark, the shadows shifted faintly in the moonlight. There was someone else in the room, he knew there was.

Will remembered being a child, in a tiny room in a trailer. He’d outgrown nightlights, supposedly, but the fear had lingered. Now, he mimicked his childhood habits, crawling to the very edge of the bed and then leaping forward, landing in a heap in the middle of the room. Too far for anything to grab him.

He clicked the light on. It was his dorm room, the pale cinder-block walls, the tiny mini fridge and microwave. The empty bed his roommate had abandoned when Will’s nightmares interrupted his own sleep too many times. Will stared at himself in the mirror. He was an adult. He was being ridiculous.

A moment more of indulgence; Will slid onto his belly and stared underneath the bed. Nothing. Of course there was nothing, Will kept so much stuff under his bed, nothing else could have ever fit there.

Will turned out the light and crawled into bed, draping himself in his blanket. He stared up at the ceiling and then finally made himself close his eyes. It was far from cold, but it certainly wasn’t a warm night. Will had been absolutely comfortable in just his boxers and the duvet until he wasn’t. First his arms, then his torso, then the blanket was kicked off entirely and Will lay prone and sweaty on the mattress. He squirmed about; onto his belly, onto his side, one foot up against the wall before it slipped, the other down to dangle over the side of the bed, toes just brushing the cool floor.

A sharp-clawed hand wrapped around his ankle and yanked him off the mattress, dropping him hard onto the ground and dragging him on his belly under the bed and into the blackness.

Will didn’t even have a chance to scream. By the time he did, he didn’t know how.

There was something above him, darker than black, and ominous. It had no eyes, no limbs, nothing at all, and yet Will  _ felt _ fingers drag over his chest, claws catching on his skin, damn near peeling him open.

_ Spread your legs, pretty thing _ .

Will did, or maybe the thing did it for him, but his thighs were spread obscenely wide and he could see red lines drawn over them, watched the skin split and let blood spill forth. He was certain he was in agony; he had to be. How could he  _ not _ be? But his cock stood erect in his boxers, trembling in anticipation with every deliberate shredding of flesh.

_ Naughty thing. _

Will choked as skin split down the very center of him, over his sternum. First just the skin, then the muscle beneath, fluttering, folding, flexing open to reveal the bone beneath and Will wanted to be sick, he was going to be sick -

_ Keep that cock nice and hard for me, and I’ll leave it til last. _

Will sobbed. He was dying, he was so certain he was dying. He was losing so much blood, he was under his bed and he was going to die with his legs spread and his cock hard and that would be how they found him.

He retched, eyes rolling back as he could  _ feel _ could goddamn  _ see _ his intestines and his stomach contract with the motion and it was too much, too fucking much, he couldn’t move he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t -

Will was struggling so hard in the blankets that he smacked his wrist against the wall beside him. That was what woke him, in the end; the sharpness of the pain in a place he hadn’t hurt in his dream. He shoved the blankets aside, slipping to the floor on jelly-legs and crawling his way to the little sink in the corner to be sick in.

He was still hard, red and dripping when he shoved his damp boxers down around his ankles. The dorm floor had communal showers, and Will wasn’t braving them like  _ this _ , aching and shame-faced. 

_ Keep that cock nice and hard for me, and I’ll leave it til last. _

There was always a voice, somewhere in the shadows. Will had some concerns about his apparent inner submissive, namely that he needed to shut up and stop listening to the creatures that lurked in blackness.

Will cleaned himself up with a towel, wet with cold water from the sink. He crawled back into bed, staring up at the ceiling, heart pounding. He was still half-hard in his clean underwear. He’d left the light on.

He didn’t sleep. 

Will was studying forensic psychology. He understood how the mind worked. He understood nightmares. That didn’t make it any easier to face them. Maybe if he’d always had the same one. Naked at the front of the class. Falling down a long flight of stairs. Teeth falling out into his hands. Typical, repetitive nightmares. 

But they were not the same. They were  _ never _ the same. Will dreamed something new, something vicious, nearly every night, and the only part that never changed was the voice. 

_ Gorgeous thing, always so eager for me _ \- while Will was drowned face-first in a bucket of cold filthy water and fucked raw.

_ Miss me, darling? _ \- as the lid of a coffin was nailed down around him and Will could do nothing more but scream and scream and come so hard in his pants he woke up.

_ I’ve certainly missed you, those sweet little sounds you make, the way you always look back at me _ \- as Will ran full pelt through a crumbling house, hands bloody from catching on splintered walls and rusty nails, feet numb from cold and pain as he tugged uselessly at doors that wouldn’t open, or doors that led to solid walls.

Will dropped out of his program.

He hadn’t slept more than a few hours a night in weeks and he’d started to drastically lose weight. The college counselor asked if he was having any emotional problems that would bring on the need to starve himself and Will laughed for so long he was almost sick from it.

He was sent to the hospital on a mandatory seventy-two-hour suicide watch, and the dreams followed him there. Shadows upon shadows crowding his room until there was nothing left to see, let alone breathe with. Infinite fingers and claws and teeth, sharp bites that took flesh from bone, rough skin that felt like sandpaper abrasive against his cock as someone - something - stroked him up and up, over and over, until he was muscle and sinew, just the head left undamaged as Will came, hard.

72 hours turned to six days, when Will not only failed to show improvement, but grew  _ worse _ . Bags under his eyes, a fever that wouldn’t quit. His nurses joked that he was the only person they knew who sleep- _ ran _ . It got less funny when he did it while he was ostensibly awake, too.

“You don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Will summarized. The doctor had been talking for about five straight minutes, failing to say anything Will considered to be substantial. 

“We have some ideas.” Translation: We have no fucking clue, how good is your insurance?

At least he didn’t have to stay on the psychiatric ward anymore. He was allowed into the main part of the hospital, where people could poke around at him more easily. Where they could do sleep studies and watch him dream. 

The first thing Will noticed, when he woke up, was that he  _ had _ woken up. Not the muddled ‘waking’ of a dream, but true alertness. The second thing he noticed was the hand, slowly dragging back the thin hospital blanket.

Will rolled onto his side. There was a man there. Not a doctor, or at least, he wasn’t dressed like one. A nice black suit, black shirt, black tie. He stood out in a room that was entirely white. His blond hair was slicked back, and he smiled with sharp teeth. Those were wolves’ teeth.

“Hello, darling.”

Will stiffened, then flopped back into bed. He  _ knew _ that voice. “Oh, great,” he muttered, “The hallucinations come in three dimensions now.” Rolling over, he closed his eyes, determined to get back to sleep, to get  _ some _ attempt at rest, even if it was another nightmare.

A hand set heavy to his lower back and Will shivered despite himself. It felt so human, so warm, not like the nebulous thing that tormented Will in his dreams and left him hard and aching for more when he woke.

Vaguely, Will wondered when the last time someone other than a doctor or a nurse touched him, when the last time was that someone comforted him with fingers in his hair and knuckles down his spine and the answer hurt to think about so he didn’t. He didn’t think about it. He didn’t think about how nice it felt when his hospital gown was pulled open, far too gently, and absolutely  _ human _ fingers traced the dimples near his tailbone.

“Fiery even outside of the confines of your mind, how curious.”

“Shut up.”

A sharp swat against his thigh brought Will’s head back with a yelp and he frowned. The other just smiled that predator’s grin again, fingers still meandering over Will’s skin in a teasing pattern that was far too pleasurable to shift away from. Will did his best to, anyway.

“You like what we do together.”

“ _ Together _ ?” Will tossed himself face-first into the pillow again and mumbled, “It’s hardly  _ together _ when I have no ability to move, or protect myself as you  _ ravish me _ .”

“An apt choice of words, love.”

Those fingers teased higher up Will’s spine, over the curve of it, spreading to cover the breadth of Will’s ribs, still standing stark through his pale skin. The touch felt like sunlight and Will groaned.

“You let me unmake you,” the thing said, “piece by piece until you are nothing but iron and rage, and always,  _ always _ so fucking hard for me when I do.”

Fingers slid into Will’s hair, cupping the back of his head and he made an absolutely humiliating sound as they scraped lightly over his scalp. That voice had followed Will even when he wasn’t dreaming it. Replaying the filthy things it said, the way it curved over Will’s name, over the pet names it gave him. Baby, darling, sweetheart, little thing.

“Come to finally do me in, then?” Will asked, eyes open and watching the reflection of himself and the thing behind him superimposed over the nighttime city beyond the window. In the reflection the thing didn’t seem to have an actual shape, it fizzled and stuttered like a badly tuned television.

“Never, darling, I could never be done with you.” The hospital bed dipped and creaked as the thing slid in behind him, solid heat against his back. Will blinked at his own reflection, wondering why he tortured himself like this. 

“You’re killing me,” he whispered, as careful,  _ gentle _ hands pulled him close.

“I know.” The voice in his ear sounded almost regretful. A hand slid between his thighs to cup him, and then further back to rub against his entrance. 

“It won’t work while I’m awake.” Will was beginning to doubt he was awake at all, but if he  _ was _ , if this was somehow not some fever-bright hallucination, then it would hurt in all the wrong ways if things continued. 

“Shh, just trust me, darling. Trust me like you always have.”

“I’ve never trusted you. Ah!” A finger slid into him, its journey slicked and smooth, though Will hadn’t felt the thing pull away to grab anything. 

“You do.” The voice was sweet as honey, luring Will down into that place where terror gripped him, where fear and arousal were one and the same. “You trust me to take you apart, piece by piece, and I do.”

“You can’t do that to me here,” Will said, suddenly panicked as a second finger eased its way in. He grabbed for the bed rail, clinging to it as the fingers curled and searched inside him. He would break, he would  _ die _ -

“Trust me,” The thing repeated, rubbing its fingers against the bud of pleasure inside him, “Trust that I know how to hurt and terrify you properly, the way you need me to.” 

“I don’t need it -”

“You do.”

Will closed his eyes tight against the reflection, entire body tense with panic as he was spread wider, despite his body’s attempts to make it stop, to make all of this stop.

“I don’t want it.”

“You do.”

Will trembled, making a weak little sound as the fingers disappeared and a hand settled to his hip, guiding him to press to his stomach.

“Aren’t you going to hurt me? You always hurt me.”

“You don’t feel the pain,” came the blithe reply. “The pain does nothing for you, and so does nothing for me. I can only be what is my nature, and destruction, love, is my favorite form of creation.” Will’s legs were spread wide, and he buried his face in his hands, refusing to turn his head to the window to look again.

“No, darling, I won’t hurt you. I’ll be gentle and soft. I’ll have you begging me for release. I might even let you have it, if you’re good.”

“Why?”

“Because it terrifies you,” came the response. Will’s breath hitched and he whined, low and helpless as fire-hot lips pressed to his spine in reverent kisses. As hands that suddenly felt too warm stroked his sides, just a hint of the sharpness Will knew them in his dreams to possess.

It was right, whatever it was. Will never got hard from dreaming of horrific things, he hated case photos in class, he felt too keenly the pain the victims would have been in, those sensations rolling over him every time he had to see, like an echo of the crime. Those nights, trapped in his own head with  _ this _ , Will was hard not from the blood, or the snap of muscles being torn.

He woke aching and wet because he was terrified.

Because he had been scared, quite literally, out of his mind.

And in a heartbeat, Will was struggling, clawing at the rail to pull himself higher up the bed, reaching futilely for the call button, the emergency button next to it, the fucking drip, if that was all he could get to, so someone would be alerted, someone would come, someone would stop this -

Strong hands dragged him back down, a heavy body covering him entirely. Laughter in his ears. “There’s my boy. So fierce in your fear.” The hands trailed up Will’s arms, pinning his wrists to the stiff hospital mattress. Will shook his head, whimpering at the first thick press inside.

He was dreaming, he had to be dreaming. There was no way someone hadn’t come to check on him by now, when usually they were all over him. 

But dreams had never felt quite like this. Will was speared open on a thick, unyielding cock, working into him in one long push. He opened his mouth to scream and found fingers on his tongue, deep enough to gag him. 

“You’re beautiful,” The voice told him, “So beautiful, so delicate. I could break you in two right now. All those dreams of me ripping your belly clean through… I could do that, you know.” The fingers in his mouth sharpened like claws, pinning his tongue down, making him whine. The cock drew out and slid in again, a slow, measured thrust. 

“Or I could have you every minute of the day, just like this,” the voice continued, calm and measured even as it pistoned its hips in and out of Will, driving him mad with the slow, deep pace. “You don’t have my stamina, sweetheart. I could fuck you for literal  _ days _ . I could fill you up over and over until you were spitting my seed out of your mouth, and there’s nothing you could do to stop me.”

Will choked. His cock jerked against the bedding, leaking damp pearls of fluid as the thing riled him up further, pushing him closer to the relief he knew it could give him. His chest ached with the frantic racing of his heart. “No no no…” Another firm thrust to his prostate. Will sobbed into the sheets and refused to let himself beg to hear more.

“You know, you sound younger in your own head, darling,” it murmured, a hand moving to curl around Will’s cock and stroke as Will tried to scream again and found his attempts muffled by the fingers choking him, and the moan that overtook him. “A trapped little boy for all eternity, ready for me to play with him.”

Will was so close his eyes teared, and he hated this, he hated it. He wanted to be torn asunder, he wanted there to be nothing left of him but viscera and scattered teeth but he wasn’t getting that, he was getting something else entirely. Something he didn’t want. Something he’d never wanted and never would and -

“Lies,” a sigh, soft against Will’s cheek and he started to cry in earnest. “All lies, little dove, you’re  _ living _ for this.”

Will’s orgasm hit him sharp and quick, and he found himself rocking between the hand that milked him and the cock that fucked him and he hated that too.

“Pity. I’d have liked to stay longer,” a sharp tongue, forked and acidic, licked Will’s cheek to taste his tears, and then he was pressing flat to the bed, breathless, empty, and alone. His wail was loud enough to carry to the corridor. The nurse who found him immediately called for assistance.

\---

“Encephalitis,” the doctor said, though Will was hardly listening. He was staring at the ceiling and wondering if the water stain was actually turning to blood or if his mind was playing tricks. He didn’t even know if he was awake anymore. He didn’t know what day it was.

“We caught it in time to prevent permanent damage. You gave us quite a scare.”

“Did I?” Will mused softly. “I don’t think I’m scary.”

The doctor chuckled, artificial, humoring him. Will wasn’t very funny, either. “The symptoms will take some time to fade. Some people report them lasting for months after treatment begins.”

Great. Months. Months of suffering, of nightmares. Of being clawed into and pulled inside out.

Except…

The hallucinations he experienced were tamer, now. Sounds in the distance. Creatures walking past his line of sight that he knew couldn’t be there. 

No voice.

No nightmares.

Will slept better than he had in months. He gained the weight back. He went back to school.

He hated his life.

Dating was out of the question. Soft touches, hand-holding, all of it made his skin crawl. Even hookups who thought they were being rough with him were barely scratching the surface of what made him tick, and they never understood that he wasn’t a masochist. 

Bungee jumping was… fine. Skydiving was better. The best was long country roads at night, pedal down as far as it could go, no light but the moon to guide him. He almost hit a tree, that time, and came in his pants with only a few frantic rubs.

But it wasn’t the same. Nothing was the same. Part of Will had been carved out and emptied.

A year passed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Sometimes, Will begged. Nigel loved those nights, because he could look through the crying, right into Will’s head, and see what it was he really wanted. Other nights, like tonight, he screamed. He was never loud enough to drown out Nigel, though. Nigel ensured it._
> 
> Chapter one, but from the demon's perspective ;)

Nigel had killed a thousand people before, and he would kill a thousand more. He drained them for months, picking at their weaknesses, giving them exactly what they wanted until it fucking ate them up.

Then he moved on to the next one.

It always started simple enough. Test the boundaries. Poke and prod at what made them tick. When Nigel slid into the mind of Will Graham, he had a method already prepared.

The first night was formless. Sensation, nothing more, slide inside and around his victim, until they spilled over and gave him the energy he so eagerly craved. The second night, he pushed a little further. With his victim’s essence inside him, he could see them more clearly, create the form that would best suit their desires.

Poking and prodding into Will, on the other hand…

“Oh,” Nigel whispered into Will’s dreams, pleased when he shivered, “Oh, pretty thing, you  _ are _ a filthy one, aren’t you?”

He started small. Just himself, pinning Will to a hard concrete floor while he screamed and cried and begged. Nothing to see but blackness. Nothing to feel but Nigel’s cock and the claws that dug into his throat every time he shrieked, punishing him for noise. Simple, but effective. Will could barely hold out, coming in his boxers like a teenager after only a few minutes of rutting.

This was going to be fun.

Fear was basic, in its most literal term. Human beings were conditioned by generations of evolution to fear certain things and do everything in their power to avoid them. The dark and the unknown. Strange sounds. Deep water.

Usually, that would be enough.

Usually, young men were not like Will Graham.

Will was terrified. He was extraordinarily responsive. But even in that fear he craved Nigel in a way Nigel had never experienced before. When he came to Will, he was greeted. When he tasted the panic around him, anticipation left an aftertaste on his tongue.

So Nigel pushed harder. He took more. He brought Will to the very edges of his comprehension and dropped him into consciousness to find pleasure on his own.

What delighted Nigel the most was that he  _ did _ .

"Gorgeous thing," he whispered, hand fisted hard in the sweaty curls at the back of Will's head. The boy struggled, fought with all his might as Nigel drowned him in a bucket. He gave him reprieve, a moment, nothing more, watching spit and tears and bile mingle with the water slicking the boy's face, just a touch of the nose bleed that would follow him through into wakefulness later. "Always so eager for me."

He fucked into Will hard enough to tear skin, hard enough to hear his garbled screams echo in the tin and dirty water.

And between his thighs, he was hard and dripping as always. 

Nigel only touched him while his head was under, while he was sobbing and gasping for breath. Only while he courted death, did Nigel wrap a hand around him and ease him closer to euphoria.

Still, when Will  _ did _ come, it was untouched, in the very moment that Nigel brought him back up from agony and fucked in deep. Beautiful, baffling little thing.

Nigel got to be creative with Will. He didn’t care about the pain, only about the bone-chilling terror, the certainty of his own demise. Sometimes, Nigel skipped over the pain entirely.

“Did you miss me, darling?” 

He held Will down, back to Nigel’s chest, hands clawing frantically at the wood above him. He would wake with ragged, torn nails and gouges in his headboard, but for now, he was Nigel’s, the two of them trapped tight together as the coffin was nailed shut, Nigel shoving his hips up with every thud of the hammer.

Sometimes, Will begged. Nigel loved those nights, because he could look through the crying, right into Will’s head, and see what it was he really wanted. Other nights, like tonight, he screamed. He was never loud enough to drown out Nigel, though. Nigel ensured it.

“You’ve got me forever now, sweetheart,” Nigel told him, as dirt was dropped by the shovelful onto the coffin, as Will sobbed and swallowed some that fell through a crack. “You’ll spend the rest of your life with me deep inside you.” He moved Will against him, jerked him up and down on his cock, and Will screamed so beautifully as the air grew thin, until his climax hit so hard he woke himself from Nigel’s arms.

Beyond tormenting the boy, Nigel enjoyed watching him. He enjoyed seeing the paranoia seep into Will’s waking world. He had devoured boys like him before, they never lasted so long. He devoured men and women alike who clung to life with every ounce of their being, aching to outlive him, begging to survive.

Will wasn’t like any of them. He had no innate desire to live, he had no aching need to be healthy and well. But his tenacity in holding on, keeping his life trembling on a knife’s edge, was such a fascination to a creature like Nigel. Will was a rare thing, and Nigel did what he was best at: he slowly killed him.

“I’ve certainly missed you,” Nigel told him honestly, as Will scrambled up from the floor and took off as fast as his dream-self could conjure a flight. Nigel didn’t patronize him by slowing his steps, or trapping Will in a loop of motion that made him feel as though he were crawling through molasses. Will would do that on his own, quite competently. No, Nigel allowed him the full use of his eager body here, as he did in every nightmare they shared.

“Those little sounds you make,” Nigel sighed, leaning back against one of the crumbling walls and flicking the tip of his thumb against his finger to light a flame there, conjuring a cigarette between his lips. The house wasn’t anything in particular. Based on a ruin or a hundred that Nigel had walked through in his long, long,  _ long _ existence. A door from one, a window from another. The floor of an old meat processing plant he’d sat in once, admiring the reeking carcasses that had been left to rot within.

He watched Will trip over one now, hands smeared in the remnants of the creature’s stomach contents. He watched Will slam himself into a door, hard enough to splinter the wood, hard enough to hurt his shoulder. He watched Will do it again, and took a drag of his cigarette as the door finally burst from the rusted hinge to reveal a bricked up wall behind.

Will whined and Nigel’s entire form shivered with it. He met Will’s eyes as the boy cast them back, wide and blue and horrified. Nigel didn’t even need to take a step towards him, Will’s mind was already looping the corridor he was fleeing through in on itself, keeping him just feet from Nigel no matter how fast he ran from him.

“And you always look back for me, don’t you darling?” he murmured. He flicked his unfinished cigarette in Will’s direction, watched it catch against some spilled oil on a wall he’d borrowed from a panel beaters. Will’s sob was ambrosia to him. Nigel needed only to reach out to tug Will back against him, shoving him face-first into the flames and through them - and the wall - to the outside of the house, the fifth floor, up, up, up above a rotted empty street.

Will came before they even fell.

He came again when the impact of them hitting the ground drove Nigel hard against him.

Nigel rarely got to have someone like this, already raw and tender. Most of them woke from the exhaustion, or slipped over the final ledge to death. 

Will, wonder of a creature that he was, clung weeping to what Nigel offered him. He relished it even as he shook with his own sobs, both in reality and the dream. Nigel fucked him into broken whimpers, until even Will had to let go, lingering in that paralyzed place between dreams and waking, feeling Nigel inside him and seeing nothing but his own bedding.

Nigel was hooked. He slid deeper into Will with every taste of him. He saw life, intelligence, a mind filled with enough shadows to create his own horrors, without any of Nigel’s help. 

By the time Will was confined to a hospital bed, Nigel knew. He loved this boy, this beautiful creature made of darkness and brilliance . He wanted to taste pieces of him forever, but forever would only be days if Nigel continued as he was.

A few more days, though. A few more dreams. A few more stolen moments.

“Be still, sweetheart.”

He froze Will in his own terror, pinned like a butterfly, Nigel’s hand deep inside, fingers caressing the flutter of his heart. 

“I could touch you like this forever. I could take a bite of you. I should, a piece to keep with me. Open up for me, darling, let me see your insides.”

“No, no -” the boy shook, hard enough that Nigel could see even without his help Will would tear himself apart like this. All he would need to do would be to hold on to his heart until it stopped working on its own.

But Nigel was always an overachiever.

He drew a thumb softly, almost intimately over Will’s heart, feeling the heat of it, the pressure of blood within the aorta as it pulsed beneath his fingers, faster and faster, harder and harder -

“No need to work so much, darling,” Nigel told him, “you’ll tire yourself out before we’re done.”

He had seen Will’s nightmares even when he wasn’t part of them, he had been drawn to the boy initially for that; his ability to conjure horrors beyond words or reason in his mind. He knew what Will feared most. Confinement, lack of freedom, lack of independence, a situation he could not possibly escape despite any effort.

Trapped. Will was scared of being trapped.

So Nigel soothed him, bending over Will’s body, his own pulled unnaturally long to reach where he needed to, and kissed his terror from him, pulling it in whimpers and sobs into his own being; blood to ichor.

One hand held Will’s heart. One worked sharp fingers into the flesh of his hip, severing skin and muscle, twisting free bone and joint, pulling back from the kiss only when the limb he’d been tormenting fell aside free, leaving Will bereft.

“There,” he whispered. “You won’t need the other, too, because you won’t run from me, will you, darling?”

Will stared upwards with wild eyes, lips trembling. He never properly saw Nigel like this. Nigel was formless, claws and fang, the better to tear him to pieces.

The other leg, and then Will regained some of his fight. His heart raced between Nigel’s fingers, and he lashed out, his nails eager to catch against skin Nigel didn’t truly have. 

“So violent, sweetheart.” Nigel kissed his way over Will’s shoulder to place a hot, burning kiss against his right arm.

And then it was gone, as was the other. Limbless, helpless, Will screamed.

“You’re so easy,” Nigel whispered, sliding himself into Will until they were one flesh, heart to heart. “It would be so simple to keep you. Just like this, an eternity of being mine.” It was a temptation, one Nigel dared not indulge. The beauty in Will was his humanity, the way his dreams could be coaxed. Neither of them would be satisfied with permanence when they could have an infinity of choices.

Will struggled even through this, heart hammering against Nigel’s palm, the only part of himself he could still move as other appendages were taken away. He couldn’t strike out, or kick, and the helplessness felt like drowning. When Will’s screams eased to croaks, Nigel kissed his cheek, and Will came so hard he thought he’d gone blind.

Blind like the first time Nigel had consumed him, soundless, scentless, sightless room and just the driving force of Nigel in him.

Nigel brought a hand to Will’s face, turning him so they could see each other, lifting him just enough. He kept his eyes on Will as he brought the boy’s heart to his lips, kissing it as a gentleman would a lady’s knuckles, watching as Will’s eyes rolled back and he vanished into mist beneath Nigel’s form.

Lovely thing. His pleasure had pushed him to consciousness again.

But Nigel’s hunger had emaciated the boy he loved, had fashioned him into the walking wounded, and Nigel couldn’t have that. He need Will well, he needed him alert and beautiful. He needed the boy who wanted to be broken to beg him for his breaking.

Time was basic in its literal form, too. For human beings, anyway. It flowed one way, allowed an occasional glimpse back in memory. For Nigel, it moved where he moved it, no more or less than that. So stilling it, just for a moment, was as simple as a click of his fingers.

_ You’re killing me, _ his beautiful boy told him, and Nigel couldn’t lie. He was, and he knew it. They both knew it. But for their last game, their last time - or, perhaps, their first - Nigel had to have him corporeally. His form against Will’s form, and intimacy as the terror to drive them.

Will struggled, because his boy always did, always fought with everything he had. Nigel had taken too much from him, though. He was so easily trapped, pinned and spread. Nigel made love to him in slow, steady movements. He whispered fantasy in his ear, promises that would never be fulfilled.

He made Will gasp and tremble, muffled his cries with the claws Will so often imagined him to have. Nigel loved him in suffering and terror, the way he always had, and it took Will to pieces.

He didn’t stay to seek his own release. He wouldn’t take from Will that way again. Instead, he licked at his cheek, memorized the taste of him, and left him alone in bed to recover.

He couldn’t have any more pieces of Will, but he needn’t abandon him. Couldn’t, in fact. Nigel slipped through the dreams of those who surrounded Will, taking just the pieces he needed to survive. He didn’t linger the way he had with Will. There would be others, in a few decades or so, but until Will slipped from his mortal coil, Nigel wouldn’t betray him like that. 

Will improved. He returned to the beauty that had first drawn Nigel, the intelligence that carried him through life before their dalliances.

And then, for reasons Nigel couldn’t fathom, he got stupid.

It started with sex. Because everything started with sex. He watched, privately thrilled, as Will sought what Nigel had given him from mere mortals. Women. Men. Sometimes both. Sometimes many. But while they could give Will pain, they could not give him fear. Will always left unsatisfied, always groaned in agonized frustration as he returned to his own bed and bit the sheets and worked his cock in cruel tugs.

In his mind, Nigel’s Best Of playlist. Will came most often when he thought back to being buried alive with him. Cast and clung together for eternity in an airless space.

Drugs did nothing for his boy either, and Will tried many.

Dangerous parts of town for anyone else were a stroll in the park for Will Graham, and Nigel watched him, perched on a street lamp or above a shopfront as Will kicked stones down deserted alleyways and hoped for a mugger.

Next, Will started to risk his life. 

He tried to imitate the fall he and Nigel had plunged into, with a rope around his ankles and a dunk into freezing water in the canyon below. Will remained unsatisfied.

A fall from a plane felt closer to that terror, but for only seconds before the parachute ended the freefall and Will was safe and secure and returning to earth unscathed.

In those moments, Nigel ached for him. Stroked his hair in the space between reality and his own plane, enough to feel the strands but not move them. He wanted to slip into Will’s mind again and hold him close, press his body entirely inside Will’s own, take control of his limbs, bring him to screaming pleasure.

He wanted.

But he didn’t.

He never touched Will’s beautiful mind again.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Don’t go out,” Jimmy pieced together, “That’s not ominous at all.”_
> 
> _Their hands were still moving._
> 
> __Will.__
> 
> _Will straightened up. _Don’t go out, Will.__
> 
> _Alana snatched her hands away from the planchette._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The beginning is the end is the beginning...

The true nightmares didn’t return, but there were dreams of a different kind. Heat, touch, sense, memory. The last moment in Will’s hospital bed, close, as if they’d been one skin, but with none of the terror of the moments before. It had, in a way, been the most frightening experience of his life. It was always terrifying to be known, and Will knew, somehow, that the thing knew him. 

He was not so well known in his ordinary life. The summer came, and everyone came home to roost until classes started up again in the fall. He hadn’t seen his high school friends in years, and Alana came straight to his door to pull him out. 

Will liked Alana well enough. She’d always been sweet, pleasant to spend time with. And there was little else Will was doing, besides seeking out bad trips and learning parkour. 

Alana’s idea of risky was sneaking daddy’s liquor. Her girlfriend Margot had a guest house. Not a guest bedroom, a guest  _ house _ , and they all gathered there. Margot, Alana, Will, Beverly, Jimmy, and Brian. And Mason, because Mason hated it when Margot had friends who weren’t him, and no one could get him to leave.

They drank cheap beer and expensive brandy. Margot and Mason fought over horror movies, paranormal vs gory exploitation. Will sat around wondering if he could buy more ecstasy off of Mason when everyone else went to sleep.

It wasn’t even midnight when someone suggested truth or dare. It took five minutes for that to become  _ let’s use a ouijia board! _

Will snagged the brandy and took a deep, stinging drink. “Nope.”

“Come on, Will.”

“I’ll watch, I’m not asking.”

“Scared?” Mason teased. Will raised an eyebrow and tilted the bottle his way.

“Smart.”

“You don’t wanna find out if you’re going to have fifteen kids?” Jimmy chimed in, Beverly snorted a giggle against his shoulder. “Or who’s going to ask you to prom?”

“I didn’t go to prom.” Will replied with a shrug. He’d spent it at home watching westerns with his dad and hadn’t regretted a moment of it. High school had been hell.

“I spent prom in the back of a car,” Margot admitted quietly, and Alana slapped her, blushing furiously.

“Well,  _ I _ want to know who’s going to take me to prom,” Bev interrupted, pushing herself up and yanking Margot up with her. “Get that haunted bastard, let’s bother some demons.”

“And beer please.” Brian called after them.

The board was one of those old-school, actually wooden ones. Mason drawled on about how his dad had bought it from a witch doctor in Louisiana.

“Ouija started in Baltimore,” Will replied, comfortably buzzed on the brandy and beer. Mason just flicked his nose - rather painfully - as he walked past Will to join his sister and the rest of them around it.

“Shut the fuck up.”

There were six of them playing, and split into threes to keep it fair. Will moved to sit on the couch with his legs crossed to watch them all. Mason, Margot and Alana set their hands to the planchette first.

The usual crap followed.

_ Are any spirits present? -  _ Yes.

_ Will you speak with us? _ \- Yes.

_ Did you die in this house? _ \- No.

_ What’s your name? _ \- Don’t.

“What the fuck?” Brian snorted. “Don’t?”

“Maybe spirits don’t have names?” Alana suggested.

“Don’t be stupid,” Mason snapped, “Everything has a name. What’s your name?” He asked again.

Go.

“Go?” Margot asked tentatively.

Out.

“Don’t go out,” Jimmy pieced together, “That’s not ominous at  _ all. _ ”

Their hands were still moving.

Will.

Will straightened up.  _ Don’t go out, Will. _

Alana snatched her hands away from the planchette. “That’s not funny, Mason.”

“I didn’t do anything!” Mason insisted, raising both his hands in the air.

“You always have to pick on people, don’t you?”

“I like to have  _ fun _ . It’s not my fault no one can take a joke. But I  _ didn’t do anything this time. _ ”

Margot and Will were both still staring at the board. Will dropped down across from her, adding his fingers to the planchette. She looked at him, then back to the board.

_ Don’t go out, Will. Don’t go outside. Don’t go don’t go don’t go.” _

A lightbulb blew out. Alana shrieked. Both Will and Margot released the planchette, stilling it over the O. 

“I think that’s enough of that,” Margot said quietly. 

“Yeah,” Jimmy agreed, “This is boring.”

“You have to say goodbye, first,” Brian insisted. Off their looks, he added, “What? I have a kid sister. It’s in the rules.”

They said goodbye. Nothing weird happened. Will kept staring at the board, even as Mason cleared it away.

Alana cleared her throat. “Who else  _ really _ wants some snacks?”

“Not Will,” Bev said, laughing.

“I do, actually.” Will countered.

“Will, no,”

“What? Because a stupid game told me not to?”

“You didn’t even want to play,” Jimmy reminded him. “Now it’s stupid?”

“Yes.”

“No, Will,” Alana insisted. “Just hang out here till we get back. We won’t be long.”

Will looked at her, at Jimmy, and the others, and shrugged. “Fine. Whatever. Go. Get me a Twinkie.”

“Eww,” Bev snorted, punching him in the arm. “I’ll get you something else, Graham, those things are rank.”

As everyone filed out, Will caught Mason’s eye and gestured. The other nodded, eyes flicking to the rest of the group and back to Will.  _ Later _ . Margot just raised her eyebrow at Will as she passed, glancing back to the floor where the board had been and shaking her head.

The house - and its guesthouse - were not far from some 24-hour corner stores. It didn’t bother Will how long his friends would be gone, or that he couldn’t go with them - he didn’t want to upset Alana if the game had affected her so much. What did bother him was the game singling him out.

He hadn’t had the dreams since he was sick, nothing close to them. And for some reason this itched at him in a way few things ever had. The urge to go outside was intense, grating in that he’d been told not to. Will looked around, found nothing else in the room amiss, and grabbed a cigarette from a pack left behind.

He’d started smoking recently, trying to relive a certain memory perhaps.

Outside it was quiet, and Will turned in the opposite direction to where his friends had gone. The neighborhood was affluent, nothing could actually go wrong here. It was early morning now, very early, and Will walked quickly because he didn’t know what else to do. Part of him wanted to scream to the sky, ask whatever or whoever had moved the stupid game why it wanted him inside so badly. Part of him wanted to do something rash, something to warrant the warning in the first place.

He was on edge, he felt manic. He didn’t even notice he’d walked into someone until they shoved him up against a wall, a small knife to his throat.

“Wallet, now.”

It really was kind of a pathetic knife. Will had felt sharper claws digging into his flesh. The man who’d pinned him wasn’t anything to write home about either. Despite it all, Will gave a slightly hysterical giggle. 

He was still fucking  _ hard.  _

“What the fuck is your problem?” The man growled. He pressed forward a little more, his knife drawing a thin bead of blood that trickled down Will’s throat. 

“It’s just… you should know that this is the  _ least _ intimidating thing that’s happened to me all year.” Will knew he shouldn’t be laughing, but he couldn’t help himself. He’d always reacted poorly to nerves. 

“Who the fuck do you think you are?”

“I’m Nigel, who the fuck are you?”

Both Will and the would-be mugger turned their faces towards the voice. Will stiffened. In every way possible. 

“Actually, don’t answer that,” said the thing from his nightmares, the man who’d invaded Will’s hospital bed. 

The mugger turned to him, and Will felt a spray of blood on his face before he even knew what happened. A wet smack to the pavement, a crunch beneath fancy shoes, and a hand to Will's throat that made him moan.

"Stupid, reckless boy, how much fucking clearer do I have to fucking be?" Nigel hissed, leaning close enough to feel how hard Will was. He bared his teeth, pressed harder, and Will whimpered. " _ What did I fucking say _ ?"

"Please."

"Will."

"Outside, don't go outside," Will whispered, bringing his hands up to cling to Nigel's arms, strong, entirely human arms, the form that had made love to him in his hospital bed when Will was losing his mind.

He didn't care that he was choking, he didn't care that he was covered in viscera. He didn't care. He rolled his hips against Nigel and dropped his head back with a sigh.

"God I missed you, where did you go?"

The hand around his throat tightened, almost reflexively, constricting his airways further before Nigel released him completely. Will whined, trying to pull him back in.

“You were dying,” Nigel growled, the noise rippling down Will’s spine like a dream. “I was killing you, stupid boy, and now you’re killing yourself.”

“You left,” Will reminded him, “you left, and I wasn’t even sure you were real. You left, and I couldn’t get you back.”

Nigel scoffed. When he pressed back into Will’s space, he looked smug. “You can’t imitate me, darling. I’m something else entirely.”

“I know,” Will gasped, close enough that they could kiss if Nigel would just turn his head a little more. “I know, but I couldn’t-“

“I told you you needed me,” Nigel murmured. 

He still wasn’t kissing Will, was only touching enough to brace him against the wall, and Will couldn’t take it anymore. He surged forward, nipping harshly at Nigel’s lower lip, eyes daring him to do something about it. 

That rumbling purr of threat again and Will threw all caution to the damned winds, winding his arms around Nigel's neck and pressing up onto his toes to kiss him deep.

He was bitten for his trouble, blood mingling in their kiss and Will didn't care, he clung on and gratefully rocked against Nigel's leg when he shoved it between Will's own. Will hadn't had a proper orgasm since the hospital. Even alone it had felt like a shadow of the pleasure he'd felt when Nigel was destroying him.

He needed it.

He ached for it.

He wanted to ask if Nigel had been with him the whole time, or if he'd just shown up now, a serendipitous meeting when children played with dead things.

He wanted to ask why Nigel hadn't killed him, then, when he'd so enjoyed bringing Will to the brink the months before the hospital.

He wanted. He goddamn  _ wanted _ .

"Take me apart."

"No."

"Take me apart and shove me back together, or don't, I don't care, just don't go again."

Will felt a sharpness in his side, behind his heart, at his throat, all at once, and came, hard, just from the thought that Nigel was doing it. From the fear of being left here with a body torn apart and him the only one present.

He clung harder, pressed his forehead to Nigel's and met his eyes. Wine and whiskey, blood and earth.

“Don’t go,” he begged. He could see it in Nigel’s face, and the fear it gave him brought no arousal with it. “No, wait, please-“

Nigel rested a finger against Will’s lips, silencing him. There was no claw, just a human finger. Will wondered how much of Nigel was real and how much he’d constructed for Will. 

“You have to get back to your party.”

“I don’t want to go back.”

“Non-negotiable.”

“It’s a stupid party.”

Nigel laughed, shaking his head. “Stubborn little thing,” he chided, “already courting more punishment from me?”

Will glared. “I’ve already been punished. I was abandoned.”

Nigel tilted his face into Will’s neck, kissing softly under his jaw, as gentle as he has once been cruel. “Go back to your party, darling. I’ll visit you next time you sleep alone.”

Will’s nails dug sharply into Nigel’s back. “I don’t believe you.”

Nigel just grinned, teeth sharp and eyes glowing, before pushing a curl behind Will’s ear. “Tough shit, sweetheart.”

And then he was gone.

Will blinked, then cursed loudly enough for his voice to echo around the street. When he looked down to his feet, the man was gone, the blood he’d left behind was gone. Will himself was clean once more, not covered in blood. He could still taste the blood in his mouth.

He cursed again, Nigel specifically this time, and turned on his heel to trudge back to the guest house.

Whether Nigel had slowed time, or Will had literally not been out very long, he wasn’t sure. He was back before his friends and dropped himself heavily into one of the couches, snaring up a half-drunk bottle of beer. He wanted to go home. He needed to. His foot was jumping against the floor, his eyes looking out into the middle distance.

Nigel, he thought vaguely.

His name is Nigel.

Will was woken from his reverie when a Twinkie smacked him in the face. Bev laughed when he cursed at her, before holding out a fresh bottle for him to take, too.

“Did you stay inside like a good boy?”

“You know me, fucking boy scout,” Will replied. Alana seemed truly relieved that he was fine, and Will smiled at her reassuringly before sitting back with a sigh. “Might head home though.”

“What? No. Come on, it’s early.”

“You don’t have to go, Will,” Margot told him. “You know there’s room enough to stay.”

“And space to share for those who want to share,” Brian added, amused.

“Dad was trying to encourage ‘family bonding’ while I’m home,” Will lied, “he was practically begging me to get up with him in the morning to work on the truck.”

“Your dad’s been working on that truck since middle school,” Bev scoffed. 

Will shrugged. “He’s gotta get it right sooner or later.”

In truth, Will had no idea where his dad was. On a job somewhere, most likely. He’d remembered to leave a note this time, but even that just said “Monday or Tuesday. Be good.” Which was as close to affection as his father ever got. 

It was fine. Preferable, even, because when Will slid naked between cool sheets, there was no one home to hear him. 

Sleep did not come easy. It never had, but Will lacked the bone deep exhaustion he’d had when Nigel was visiting him nightly. And there was excitement, a constant thrum echoing in his chest. 

_ You said you said- _

“Naughty boy, you were told to go back to your party.”

Tonight, it was a cliff, Will bent over at the hips, head dangling free over the abyss, fingers scrabbling frantically at the dirt and rocks that made up the side. 

"I did," Will told him, heart hammering, eyes already going hazy with how high up they were. The ground pulsed in his vision, closer, farther, closer, farther… he was so hard his stomach hurt. "I did, I stayed, I left -"

"Missed my cock so much?"

_ "Yes _ ," Will whined, hands slipping on the stones, heart in his throat when he didn't catch himself in time. "NIGEL!" 

His hair was snared, a tight cruel grip, and Will watched the ledge they were on fall away, closer and closer to his knees. His cock was rock-hard in his pants and he whimpered.

"Don't let go -"

"No?"

"No, please - PLEASE!"

Will plummeted, crying as he grabbed at the rocks, the dried roots, the sandy clay -

He didn't manage, he kept falling, and he was going to die, he was  _ going to die _ …

Will jerked out of bed like a defibrillator had hit him, catching himself against the wall as he panted, looking about himself until he found Nigel by the window, leaning casually there. His eyes glowed as his cigarette did, faded as the cherry cooled.

"What am I to do with you, filthy thing?" Nigel asked him softly. "Destructive and disobedient as you are. Maybe I should kill you."

“You won’t,” Will told him. There was little he was sure of, when it came to Nigel, but he was sure of  _ that.  _ “If you wanted me dead, you just wouldn’t have left. You would have let my brain light up and burn itself out.”

Nigel stabbed his cigarette out on his own palm. He didn’t seem to cross the room, so much as slip right through shadow. “I’ve killed stronger men than you, pretty boy,” he said, close enough to Will’s ear to send chills down his spine. 

“But not me. That’s why you left, isn’t it?”

The blankets slid away, dragged under the bed by unseen hands. Nigel’s talents did not seem to be as infinite in the waking world, but it was enough for Will’s neglected cock to throb against his thigh. 

“You,” Nigel growled, “are entirely too much trouble. And you’re going to get yourself killed.”

Will risked a hopeful smile. “All the more reason you should stick around to watch me.”

“Reckless,  _ suicidal _ little-“ Nigel draped himself over Will, his own clothes vanishing. Maybe they hadn’t been there at all, just an illusion for Will’s benefit. “I’m going to make sure it hurts.”

“You said I didn’t get off on the pain.”

Nigel sank sharp teeth into the meat of Will’s shoulder. “That’s why it’s a punishment. Spread open for me, darling, if you need it so badly.”

Will bit his lip and obeyed. The bite hurt. He knew the fucking would as well. But he wasn't going to beg for mercy, he wasn't going to ask for what he got in the hospital.

Because then Nigel  _ would _ leave again.

Will swallowed thick, catching Nigel's gaze when he pulled back, a scowl on his face. Will wasn't scared of him. He was scared of what would happen if he didn't want him, if he left.

"Do you get off on pain?" Will asked, finding a deep bark of a laugh in answer.

"I'm a demon of  _ lust _ , sweetheart. There is nothing I don't get off on."

Will drew his legs up around Nigel, wincing when a rough hand spread them wider. He still had no idea if what happened in the hospital was in his head or out of it, but either way, this thing held his innocence, fed from it.

"Should I cry?"

"You will cry."

Will laughed, he couldn't help it. Like he'd laughed at the knife stabbing his throat hours before, like he'd laughed when the doctors told him he could have died. He reached up and drew his hand, weak and so very human, down Nigel's chest, digging his nails in as much as he was able. He left no marks, but Nigel's eyes flickered with flame again.

"Then make it worth my tears."

Nigel tore into him, or so it felt. There was some kind of slick to ease the way, but little else. He fucked Will on his back, with Will gasping and clawing at him, and then rolled him to his belly when Will’s flailing hands caught his cheek. 

“You wanted this,” Nigel reminded him, “you wanted what I could give you, now you’ll take it.”

It burned, and ached, and Will was somehow hard, even without the fear. Just because it was  _ Nigel _ , and he knew Nigel could touch him just the way he wanted to be touched, the way he  _ needed _ it. He’d meant to be still, behaved, but it was too much, an overwhelming thickness that pierced through him. 

“We’ll have to be careful,” Nigel hissed into his ear, yanking Will’s head back to expose his throat. “It would be so easy for me to lose control. To take too much. I could kill you in a breath, sweet boy, and you’d never know it was coming.”

Will wailed into his pillow, shaking apart at the seams. “Please,” he begged, “oh god, Nigel!”

"Greedy little sadist," Nigel praised him, slowing his pace but somehow,  _ somehow _ , growing larger within Will at the same time. The stretch cruel, now, the pressure exquisite in its agony.

"God, it hurts."

"Don't bring him into this." Nigel hissed, claws folding over Will's throat again, nails digging into his skin with pinpricks of pain. "Pray to me, since you're so demanding of my presence."

"Nigel please," Will sobbed. He didn't know what for. Everything hurt. Every inch of his skin, every nerve, every goddamn follicle that held his hair to his body. "Please -"

_ Please don't go. _

_ Please use me. _

_ Please need me. _

_ Want me, want me, want me - _

Nigel bit down again, Will's other shoulder, a mark to match the first, and still the boy arched into him, turned as Nigel yanked him, cried, and shook, and bled for him.

Nigel was not unused to denial. Was not unused to ignoring it entirely for his own ends. He would have ignored Will's, had he offered any, but he didn't. This stubborn, clever, reckless thing who offered his body and mind to the mercies of devils.

One devil.

Just Nigel.

He drew a hand harsh over Will's chest, where he'd once torn him asunder entirely in a dream, and the boy came with a scream, body spasming in pleasure, squeezing hard around his penetration.

He was beautiful in pain.

Nigel drew it out, fucked him right through into sobbing, Will’s breath hitching with every creak of the bed. When he came, Nigel was sure to force Will’s face into the pillow, filling him in cruel thrusts until he was leaking more seed than any human could have given him, tinged pink with his blood. 

Will trembled beneath him, sucking in hot, strangled breaths, the pillowcase conforming to the shape of his nose. He squirmed under Nigel, suffocating slowly until Nigel saw fit to let him up. 

Will was sloppy. He’d be open and dripping for hours, now, at the very least. And Nigel had still given him so very little of what he was capable of. 

Nigel sprawled out next to him, running a hand through Will’s damp, sweaty hair. “Imagine how nice that could have been if you’d been a good boy for me, hmm? If I’d taken the time to stretch you open for what I can give you?”

Will looked up at him, still gasping for breath, and grinned. “It gets better?”

Nigel snorted, conjuring another smoke for them to share, another flick of thumbnail to finger to light it up.

"If I hadn't quite literally been fucking your mind for months I'd wonder if you had a goddamn death wish, kid." Nigel told him, words slurring around the filter as he took a drag. When he offered it to Will, the boy crawled nearer to take it in his lips, hands still too weak, shaking too hard to try and take it.

"I don't know what I have," Will answered honestly, letting himself rest closer to Nigel, still trying to catch his breath. Any time he shifted anything below the waist he winced, agony running up his spine. He didn't even want to know if he'd walk again.

Right then he didn't care.

"I don't know what's wrong with me, but something was before you and something is now."

"Wrong is a frame of mind," Nigel told him, blowing several smoke rings towards the ceiling, where they dissipated as though they never were. He leaned over to draw the heel of his hand down Will's spine, a heavy pressure. He ignored the agonized whine that elicited. Once he reached to pull the cigarette from his lips again, Will had pushed up on his arms.

"I guess," Will agreed, looking back and wincing now not from the pain but the mess left behind. "You don't find anything wrong with me."

"I'm hardly the fucking yardstick to measure against."

"Humans bore me," Will replied, reaching for the cigarette this time, eyes narrowing as he watched Nigel and inhaled.

“That’s because they’re insipid, darling. And you, you are something else entirely.” Nigel took the cigarette back and licked his next taste directly from Will’s mouth. Fear had a flavor, a certain bitterness that Nigel had learned to love. “There will have to be others,” he warned, “if I fed solely from you, you’d be dead in weeks.”

“I don’t care,” Will swore, “just take as much of whatever you need from me as you can.”

“You want to be my nourishment?” Nigel asked, cupping Will’s jaw, “you want to be my feast?”

“I want you to terrify me,” Will whispered, eyes wide and eager, “and I want you to do it because you want to. Because you want  _ me _ . Like you did in the hospital.”

Nigel drew Will in, ignoring his whines and whimpers until Will was draped across his chest. “I hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but that’s not the only time I’ve made love to you. It’s not all flowers and chocolates when you’re loved by someone like me.”

“You held my heart in your hands,” Will said immediately, “I know what it feels like when you make love to me, Nigel. I’m not expecting anything else.”

The thing blinked at him, whatever Nigel was. In his human form, he was handsome, rough, he smelled like warm ashes. He could overpower Will even if he wasn't a supernatural entity. Will responded to him like he hadn't ever responded to anyone else.

"You don't have a death wish," Nigel said after a moment. "That's the fucking strangest thing. You actually get off on the shit I do to you."

"Yes."

"Why."

Will swallowed, letting himself rest on Nigel's chest as his fingers - human once more - stroked through his hair.

"You make me feel alive," Will admitted quietly. "You see me at my most vulnerable, peel away the hideousness of my humanity and you want me, still. Enough to not kill me when you could have."

"Don't push your luck, darling, I still might."

"Then you will." Will shrugged. Nigel snorted. Will flicked his eyes up. "I'm not the first I'm sure."

"You're sure?"

"I'm not that fucking special," Will replied, just as certain. But then he ventured to kiss his way over the hot skin beneath him, tasting the absolute humanness of it and relishing that as he licked his lips and did it again. "What do you want me to do?"

"What?"

"To you." Will confirmed, looking up again. He did blush this time, though, a beautiful and dark pink. "I want to - I don't even know, honestly. Pleasure a pleasure demon?"

Nigel bared his teeth. Somehow, Will knew it was a smile. “I have no refractory period,” he warned, “and no human needs. You put your mouth on my cock and I may just decide to keep you there for days, until starvation threatens to take you.”

Will moaned and planted a sloppy kiss beneath Nigel’s navel. He could move a little more easily with every passing moment, though the pain lingered, and he wriggled down slightly to face Nigel’s cock. 

It was an ordinary cock, slowly hardening under Will’s gaze. Not nearly large enough to have been what ripped Will open, but Will knew by now that the man Nigel appeared to be was merely a construct. He suspected Nigel himself was something formless, something closer to the shadow from his dreams. 

Nigel tasted clean, free of sweat, as if they  _ hadn’t  _ just been fucking. Will trailed his tongue up the underside, sucked hard at the head, and felt long fingers tangle in his hair. 

“Hold your breath.” That and a laugh was the only warning Will got before Nigel began to fuck him, jerking his head up and down in his cock and pushing further into his fluttering throat with every thrust. 

“I’m going to keep you,” Nigel growled, “I’m going to ruin your life and make you wish you were dead, and you’re going to get off on it you beautiful, awful creature. Open up for me, baby, I want to see how much we can fit inside you.”

With a whimper, Will obeyed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FIND US ON [TWITTER](https://twitter.com/sw_writestuff) | [TUMBLR](https://stratsandwhiskeywritestuff.tumblr.com/) | [PILLOWFORT](https://www.pillowfort.social/StratsandWhiskeyWriteStuff)

**Author's Note:**

> FIND US ON [TWITTER](https://twitter.com/sw_writestuff) | [TUMBLR](https://stratsandwhiskeywritestuff.tumblr.com/) | [PILLOWFORT](https://www.pillowfort.social/StratsandWhiskeyWriteStuff)


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